In Defense Of Late Night Comedian TV Hosts

Late night comedian hosts receive an onslaught of criticism in today’s media landscape. People - mainly those in the conservative media - just love to hate on late night comedians, calling them “liberally slanted”, biased, and “pushing the Hollywood liberal agenda.”

Simple: Because all of the Sean Hannity’s and Rachel Maddows of the TV world forget that late night talk shows are aiming to hit at a specific target audience that they themselves are not hitting: the prized 18-49 demographic. Additionally, political pundits seem to think as if late night talk shows are actual news shows, when in fact they’re anything but. (If you need any proof of this, just hop on over to The Daily Show’s Instagram bio.) And before you bother to @ me saying things like “Oh but all the hosts report on the news or something, don’t they?”, yes I realize they do this, but they then immediately follow through with their commentary and jokes on the matters at hand.

The difference between political pundits and late night talk show hosts is that the hosts openly express their bias’ to their audience in a charismatic manner. This disarms the negative tone and mood of the news they comment on and makes the audience trust in what they’re saying in their commentary. Through this disarmament, some hosts may seem as if they have an agenda, but as I’ve said, all they want to do is to make their audience laugh and have them keep tuning in every night. It is through the monologues, segments, interviews, you name it, that the hosts present their views, which is perfectly acceptable.

Late night comedian hosts are truly the saviors of this crazy news-filled era that we live in. The hosts are just trying to make fun of the world we live in. And come on, in a world where there’s just so much unfortunate news happening everyday, don’t we all deserve to laugh even in the darkest of times?